Elliot Perlman's The Street Sweeper is an ambitious look into the dark
corners of American history

'Tell everyone what happened here.” In Elliot Perlman’s novel, these are the final words of a Jewish woman about to be hanged in Auschwitz. This imperative – to communicate and preserve the truth about history’s darkest hours – is understood as more than a platitude in The Street Sweeper.

Adam Zignelik teaches history at Columbia University, but his research has stalled and securing tenure seems a fading dream. However, a tip-off leads him to discover a cache of recordings which he is amazed to realise are oral interviews with Holocaust survivors. Across New York, an ex-con hospital janitor, Lamont Williams, befriends a man dying of cancer who has a tell-tale serial number tattooed on his arm.

As Lamont listens to the old man’s stories of Auschwitz, and as Adam reviews the harrowing testimonies, the narrative opens up several historical storylines.

Perlman’s acclaimed previous novel Seven Types of Ambiguity was a sprawling take on modern relationships that shifted across an array of perspectives. This epic about racial persecution employs similar techniques but scales up the ambition, suggesting that Perlman is gunning here for a career-defining third novel.

Regrettably, however, his contemporary framing story is often badly fumbled. Characters are manoeuvred into earnestly spouting themes, scenes of racial rapprochement are crassly engineered and imaginary conversations are conjured up to enliven dull stretches of the story. The precarious progress of Adam’s research, as he glimpses important untold stories, is the only truly convincing seam in this contemporary narrative.

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It is a surprise, then, that the interleaved sequences set in Nazi Germany and Fifties America are so searingly potent. Lamont and Adam may be self-flagellating sad sacks, but the Jews and African-Americans in these chapters have more desperate problems than gaining tenure or passing their janitorial probation. As he depicts both the kindnesses and the unspeakable cruelties of the concentration camps, Perlman fleshes out his research with a moral and imaginative force that feels revelatory. The Street Sweeper may be uneven, but at its best it demonstrates how history and fiction can converge to tell stories that cry out to be remembered.